Images of India

I’ve traveled to India four times since the spring of 2006. Below are just a few of the many photos I’ve taken there. I hope you’ll find some pleasing or interesting. I think a few have an appealing sweetness to them. I also hope some may offer you a new perspective on and of India. Please contact me by email if you wish to use or otherwise re-publish any of these images (jurisbengoshi@yahoo.com).

It took the great Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan 22 years, from 1631 to 1653, to construct the Taj Mahal, a tribute to and tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in 1630 at the age of 39. In September 1657 Shah Jahan fell ill and in the wake of his incapacity one of his sons, Aurangzeb, deposed him from the Mughal throne and imprisoned Shah Jahan in the Great Agra Fort (covering 94 acres), which itself was constructed by Shah Jahan’s grandfather, the Emperor Akbar, along the Yamuna River during the 1560’s and ’70’s. Shah Jahan lived out his final nine years as his son’s prisoner in the Agra Fort.

The photograph above is taken from one of Agra Fort’s terraces which offers a good and dreamlike view of the Taj Mahal, a little more than 1 and 1/2 miles away. Shah Jahan no doubt stood in this very place hundreds or thousands of times during his years of captivity, looking down river to Mumtaz Mahal’s final resting place, shimmering in the distance. He died in 1666. Shah Jahan’s body was taken from the Agra Fort and laid beside his wife’s in the Taj Mahal. Their bodies lay beside one another to this day.

A kindly tourist took this photo of me at the Taj Mahal in February 2007 . . .

It’s only 8:30 and you’ve already made my day, Lois. For some photographers striking the balance between being “intimate without being intrusive” comes naturally. Me, I struggle with it. So I very much appreciate the validation.

I know yours, your photos from India, would be from some time ago, with a lot of water and other stuff (as Bob says) under the bridge. But I’d be very happy and interested to see any you can lay your hands or scanner on.

Thank you so much for your extraordinarily kind comment. I want to bring people, those who view any of my photos, “into the moment.” I’m sure
all photographers want to do this, but it’s something I really, really think about.